It’s a veritable Mad Men reunion on the set of The Romanoffs. Showrunner/writer Matthew Weiner is creating the new series for Amazon Studios. According to the AV Club, Weiner has cast Mad Men alums Christina Hendricks and John Slattery in the anthology series. Joining them will be Academy Award-nominated actress Isabelle Huppert, Boardwalk Empire’s hot-guy-playing-ugly-guy Jack Huston, Togetherness star Amanda Peet, and Swiss actress Marthe Keller.
There will be eight hour-long episodes in the series, which will center on a present-day person who believes they are a descendant from the second and last imperial dynasty of Russia that ruled for five generations. The story of the Romanovs is a bloody one. Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne in 1917, the radical socialist Bolsheviks (headed by Vladimir Lenin) took over, and the Romaovs were executed — including Nicholas, his wife, their five children, and four servants.
A recent New York Times article delves deeper into the history of the Romanovs and discusses the current-day political goings-on about putting the entire family’s remains to rest: “A century after the Russian Revolution, Czar Nicholas’s son and daughter remain unburied — even as the embalmed body of the Romanovs’ chief antagonist, Lenin, continues to attract visitors in the capital. History sometimes has a twisted sense of humor.”
The series will debut next year.